Neither beach nor mountain, on weekends there are those who decide to spend it exploring the universe. Photographic compilation of players from the other side of the galaxy
The space, last frontier. The children of the twentieth century thought that the future of the human being was in the stars. It seemed logical, we kept in our minds the curious and adventurous nature that had fed the great discoveries, the great exploratory deeds, the desire to always reach beyond the limit that marked the horizon. The last revolution was to take us beyond our little blue marble, changing ships for chrome rockets and the vast ocean for the infinite black mantle of the universe. Our imagination was fueled by literature with its magnificent stories about other worlds, and was fixed in our retinas by the cinema when it gave images and sounds that we could share in a common imaginary. Yes, our future was in the stars … Right?
It didn't happen that way. The 21st century brought us the revolution, yes, but it was not an explosion towards the ends of the galaxy but an implosion that united us all in a virtual framework. Internet would make Alexander the Great cry. Finally a place to store all human knowledge. In the network we communicate without physical ties, we travel, as Frank Herbert would say, without the need to move. The old entelechy of cyberspace is silent on today's digital reality.
Where then are those evocative phrases with which each chapter of the television series Star Trek started? … the last frontier. Have we given up that mission dedicated to the exploration of unknown worlds, to the discovery of new lives and new civilizations, until reaching places where no one has been able to reach? No, we have not given up on it. In fact, dear reader, right now there are hundreds of thousands of explorers navigating clusters and solar currents, which are setting foot for the first time on strange and remote planets. At the same time, colonies are being created in the farthest points of the Milky Way, contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations, trade routes between star systems are created, small and large empires are being born and dying while they ally, betray, make peace and face again.
All this is happening in a parallel reality. In it it is possible to visit prehistory, ancient Greece, Pharaonic Egypt; it allows us to stroll through the streets of the mythical Alexandria, through a prerevolutionary Paris or a Victorian London, through imaginary cities built under the sea or flying over the clouds; It puts in our hands the control of armies, the designs of entire nations. This is a reality where life is measured in the plural and death lasts what a fleeting reset. That parallel reality that encases us in bodies that are not ours but that it is we, which gives us the prominence in stories and impossible worlds, expands unstoppably on the other side of the screens. That parallel reality is called video games. On the artistic level, if the twentieth century was of cinema and popular music, the XXI belongs to them.
Within this framework of interactive action we will focus on parallel universes. Thus, with all the letters, because there are games that expand in solar systems, in galaxies, faithfully representing the stars we see and those we do not see, or that imagine millions of worlds where life is rich and the skies are colored cake. And we want to know how are those unpublished places of the hand of its visitors. How the community that travels through virtual space has captured its discoveries in images. With all of you, here is a collection of postcards for a galactic picnic.
No Man´s Sky and the Sci-Fi of pulp imagery
The redeemed Hello Games game has come to congregate two million users thanks to Beyond, its latest major update. No Man´s Sky, remember, puts us ahead a playground that we could not explore in depth or in a thousand lives. Its procedural universe (which is generated and expanded as a reaction to our presence) can house 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets. According to developer data, that means that, if we stepped on each one of them for a single second, it would take almost six hundred billion years to visit them all … And that is forty-two times the age of our universe.
Therefore, the visual memory that travelers share in No Man's Sky is appreciable because it is more than likely that they are unique planets not trodden by any other player. The multiplayer implementation so desired by users is already present, which breaks with the initial feelings of loneliness. That lonely explorer had a certain romantic touch crossing the universe accompanied only by his thoughts.
No Man´s Sky
As you can see in the snapshots made by these pilots in their trips collected in the gallery on these lines, the environments move away from realism and the game gives us full color postcards and strange shapes. The classic pulp influence is evident, so we are convinced that this wonderful canvas would have received the approval of the authors of the SciFi publications of the EC of the 50s, of the B series films where science was just a hodgepodge of invented words, of the books that told us about Foundations and colonizations aboard stylized rockets with a needle edge. Humanoids associated in Zone 84, cover illustrators already worn by the use and yellowed by the passing of the decades, all would applaud this live comic, this live movie, this live book where the universe opens and blooms of stars in Real time before our passage.
Elite Dangerous and the astrography of the Milky Way
We return to the black of our starry space. From Earth, the celestial vault shows us 60,000 million stars. That was Frontier's first objective, to capture the figure in his Elite Dangerous game and then expand to the 400,000 million systems that populate our Milky Way. NASA data and estimates as reliable as possible have been used for this. So much so that when the US space agency found a solar system with exoplanets similar to ours, it was already in similar coordinates on the star map of Elite. The game system was then baptized as officially discovered: TRAPPIST-1.
According to edsm.net, the website that supplies the data collected by users of the space simulator, at this point and after several years of massive expansion, only 0.011569% of the galaxy would have been explored, with 46,283,572 systems Registered This means that it would take more than thirty-eight thousand years to discover it in its entirety. 139,876,634 astronomical objects have been stored, and the pilots have made more than 125 million entries in their diaries. Logbook, stellar date … Remember? It would be Captain Kirk who would be proud on this occasion. Here you have an image gallery to illustrate that adventurous spirit.
Elite Dangerous
Unlike in No Man´s Sky, where loneliness is attractive, Elite Dangerous gives alliances, governments and empires are founded and minor factions are counted by thousands. The players are organized hierarchically in democratic, theocratic, dictatorial federations … You have to move carefully so as not to violate the space of certain governments. Perhaps you are enraged with the faction that inhabits the solar system and that prevents you from approaching the terraformed Mars, or in an attempt to reach a distant point in the galaxy you are stranded without fuel and, hopefully, it is organized by a Anonymous group a raid raid. None of this is written, there is no script, there are direct experiences under free will. It is what we know as emergent narrative. It is the theory of chaos roaming freely, expanding its subtly connected branches, filling the blank pages with stories.
EVE Online and the games of thrones
EVE Online
And if there is a veteran game in this emerging narrative that is EVE Online. Launched by the Icelandic CCP Games in 2003, EVE has given rise to countless stories, so many and so interesting that, at some point, there has been talk of immortalizing them in some way (Netflix, you're already taking). Its digital universe formed by 5000 star systems has reached more than 60,000 pilots on the same server. Organized under a strong hierarchy, the different organizations live a tense calm that can be broken by the error of a clueless player, as was the case of what was called The Battle of Asakai. You may travel in a convoy on trade routes and be assaulted by lonely pirates in search of loot, or find yourself immersed in a war that has ended up exploding by a fortuitous event. Betrayals are also the order of the day, as on that occasion when a group of mercenaries were paid to infiltrate the high spheres of one of the large corporations. After a year of work in the shade, they managed to secretly climb up to the hierarchical head in order to cut it and throw it into deep space. They are stories that deserve to be written, shot, told, so that we can know them and enjoy them that we do not live.
Visually, EVE differs from the above mentioned examples in that it is best enjoyed at scale. The star map can be seen from a distance, and skirmishes are planned as if it were a board game. Massive battles result in abstract paintings crossed by hundreds of beams of light and flashes here and there. Cutting-edge pictorial art in continuous mutation. Precious space scrap with zero base and ones. You can appreciate what was said in the image gallery at the beginning of this section.
Star Citizen and his excessive ambition
From this list, Star Citizen is the most modest game in dimensions but at the same time more clearly ambitious. It has more than 250 million dollars raised from its patrons. A record for a title that has not just come out of its work in progress status. The great work of Chris Roberts (Wing Commander) does not seem to know limits, and that is precisely his biggest problem. Planets to explore on foot or in vehicles, first and third person control, FPS-style skirmishes, large multi-capped ships, campaign and MMO mode, huge cities to trade and have fun, racing tournaments aboard fast fighters, famous actors Hollywood as Mark Hamill or Gary Oldman putting face and voice to important characters in the campaign …
Announced in 2012 and with a supposed beta for 2020, Star Citizen is currently a game that fits perfectly on this list. The images captured by players in the currently enabled worlds are not marred by the deep lore and complex gameplay of the settled universes discussed above. Curiosity and exploration in its purest state before the belligerent human nature makes an appearance and jumps everything through the air. Then you can enjoy the corresponding gallery.
Star Citizen
Having returned from your interplanetary trips, surely more than one has an interesting photo album to teach. Do not forget to show in our profiles in social networks those snapshots by remote worlds of which you are especially proud. Long life and prosperity!
